THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--VI. SWEETHEART-TIME
In the late October afternoon Lancaster rode through the Lane fast,
for he was behind time with his promise. Therefore he looked ahead of
him to each flying curve, letting the Gates of Vision pass without
notice, nor culling one magic thrill from the garden of enchantment.
Yet he checked suddenly where the Lane ran off at right angles like a
darting trout, half lest his pressed horse should take the hedge, half
in joyful recognition. Out on the drifting distance--of the land, yet
of the sky also--his Ghost-Mountain smote his eye with its strange
twin-qualities of edged clarity and floating opaqueness, like the
Shoulder of God made manifest, yet not clothed upon with flesh. What
help had it for him, after all these desolate months?
He could spare it only a moment’s greeting, but for some reason
his heart was lighter as he rode on. Amid the wreck of much the
Ghost-Mountain had foundered too, forgotten. Its vivid, unexpected
return set a faint hope beating that somehow, through some outside
power, other lost things might come to resurrection also.
The spell of the “back-end” had its will again, and in spite of him
caught him in its wound gossamer of remembrance. Though he looked
between his horse’s ears, he knew well enough that round him on every
hand were soft distances, melting, blending and changing from blue to
purple and purple to gray, with filmy pillars of smoke raised like the
standards of home against the stark, stripped woods. He could not keep
his cheek from the mild fingers of the gentle air, nor from his lungs
the smell of the fresh, damp earth, going rain- and dew-washed to its
winter sleep. And under the horse’s hoofs the dry leaves rustled and
the wet leaves crushed into a still, soft carpet of stamped crimson and
bruised gold. Far in the amber sky a black little bird was singing,
swung on a twig like a poised finger, and over Dick Crag he could hear
the baffling music of tired hounds on the last spurt of the afternoon.
Little by little he was taken and held by the old wonder and the
familiar glory, so that the last terrible months dropped away, and his
heavily self-raised prison unlocked. Through the cruel summer he had
come mechanically and doggedly, with all his joy in his work gone like
a blown petal, together with the quivering sympathy that had made him
the perfect instrument of atmosphere and environment. For this is the
last punishment of souls ordinarily attuned to Nature, when bent to
the yoke of pain or sin. They cry to her, and she does not answer; she
calls to them, and they do not heed; for though the eyes look abroad on
the same beauty, the ears gather the same music, the spirit and meaning
are fled, leaving only soulless mirages and jangled wires. But to-night
Lancaster came back again to his kingdom.
The look of sudden age, stamped on that far death-dawn, still clung to
some extent; the stern lines of his face were hammered and set; he was
thinner, and his hair had whitened a little. But for compensation he
had a new self-reliance, a new quietude born of the absence of nervous
struggle. His was now the unfearful poise of one who has fallen and
risen again before the hammer of the gods.
The inquest, the long, dreary spell of wild weather, intensifying
the merciless handling of the marsh--the dismal rent-audit, the
interminable hours of calculating and planning, of patient hearing of
complaint, of ordering and overseeing repairs--all these were behind
him now. The new tenant was settled at Ninekyrkes, and the Dockerays
had taken both him and his to their robbed hearts. For Francey was
in Canada with Lup, and though the old folk were for ever planning a
future that held Rowly with a wife at Ladyford, and Lup back at the
twin-farm--Dockera’s and Whinnerahs as of yore--they knew well enough
that for the wanderers there could be no place ever again on the
Northern marsh.
Slowly the wreck of things was pulled back into symmetry and
order--houses carpeted and papered, Dutch barns rebuilt, fences set up
again, the mutilated roads laid and rolled. The Let, too, had had all
its yawning mouths filled and strengthened, and the dykes and cuts were
deepened and increased. So the patched marsh grew trim again, and by
the time the haycutter sang on the hill, the land below had gathered
itself out of the horrors of destruction into a growing likeness of its
old beauty. Only the Lugg and the Pride were left untouched, derelicts
at the will of wind and tide.
The story had roused a storm of interest throughout the country,
coming as it did at a slack time for news, and carrying with it the
precious breath of long romance. Lanty refused all dealings with
reporters and kept his eyes from the papers, yet knew well enough
that both his father’s career and his own, their private life, and
probably his personal future, were all common property in a highly
decorated fashion. Into a seething world of clashing interests and
warring classes the tale of the Northern property, where the flower
of ancestry still sprang purely as well from yeoman and peasant stock
as from patrician, where law was less than loyalty, long service a
matter of course, friendship and understanding things born of inbred
knowledge--dropped like a mediæval, blazoned shield into the arena of
modern warfare. Men picked it up wonderingly, fitting it clumsily to an
unaccustomed arm, only to discard it with a laugh.
“No agreements? _That’s_ a lie, anyhow! You’ve got to have everything
down in writing, nowadays, or else it’s just simply putting your neck
in a halter. Landlord’s personal charm--tenants’ appreciation--sounds
like the days of Magna Charta, doesn’t it?--tenure by knight service,
socage, villeinage, and all the rest of it! I must say these
journalists know how to pile on the colour. Amity between agent and
farmers--well, I just _don’t_ think! Why, it’s an understood thing
that they’re always at each other’s throats! Scion of Hugh Lupus of
the Conquest gives his life for an old trust--feudalism dug up by the
spadeful, and plastered on with a trowel! _Lies!_”
Yet the true picture was there all the time, defying the brush of
maudlin sentiment, as a masterpiece glimmers through a daub.
The rights of the case spun between blame and praise like a feather
between two mouths. Both Lancasters were strong men of a rare type
that should be stuffed and labelled. They were also murderers, and
should both have been drowned; truth-lovers, peace-rulers, regarding
their charge as sacred; specious liars and hypocrites, afflicted with a
grossly inordinate ambition.
But, as a matter of fact, there was plenty of sympathy for the son, the
supposed victim of forced loyalty to a weak employer and an arrogant
parent, the creature of destiny, bound to take the course he did, a
helpless, doomed sheep, like all the other martyrs of the marsh. There
were certain well-meaning souls who pursued Lanty with such comforting
extracts, but even these smug blunderers did not do it twice. Only Lup
and Francey, over the sea, and Hamer, sadly silent, knew what he really
felt about it all; and not they fully. There are debts a man pays in
himself alone.
He had resisted all attempts to get him away--Hamer’s pleasant plan
for the Canaries had had a short existence and a sudden and violent
death--but Helwise had not been defrauded of her tour. For a month
she had spun luxuriously from place to place, petted and considered,
chattering incessantly and happy as a singing kettle. And after that
they had kept her at Watters for long enough, while Blenkinship’s
Marget, lent to Lanty during his aunt’s absence, scrubbed and organised
like an inspired fury, ruthlessly forcing the twittering Agnes through
the mill of discipline and method, and feeding the silent master as he
had hitherto been fed only in dreams. The transfer had been brought
about by Dandy, cognisant, through bitter experience, of his need. But
now Helwise was coming home, and King Muddle would have his own again.
Wigmore, slowly returning to a semblance of health, had spent the
summer recruiting at Bournemouth and yachting with Bluecaster, and was
now at Watters, while over at Wild Duck Harriet entertained the whole
Quetta family (whose real name was something quite different) with
reckless generosity. Lanty had seen her with them at the various Shows,
preaching Westmorland agriculture into puzzled foreign ears. He had
also seen Stubbs, no longer requiring to be soothed with rotifers, hung
about with Quetta-lings like a family elephant.
But of Dandy he had seen nothing--nothing, that is, but, at intervals,
a smiling, daintily-gracious transparency hovering on the borders of
his clouded existence. Blotted out in a night of storm, she, who had
come so near to meaning everything in his life, had ceased to mean
anything at all. But to-night the old transfiguration was upon the
once-loved fields, and everything was human and dear again, even as the
friendly earth. At eventide there was light.
To a groom crossing the drive at Watters he handed over his horse, and
went up through the gate at the top of the garden to the fields above.
The house behind him lay silent and apparently deserted, but in Hamer’s
meadow there was a busy little community, receiving that particular
instruction in butter-making which comes under the County Council
heading of “Higher Education.”
The Travelling Dairy Van from Asprigg was planted on the breast of the
hill looking over the tiny, half-hidden village below, the long curve
of the North Road, and the upward sweep of the park. In the big tent
stretching from the side of the Van a dozen churns were at work on the
wet boards of the temporary floor, and in the frame of lifted curtains
on the far side the white gowns of pupils and instructress showed
vividly against the green of the hill beyond. There was quite a little
crowd on the surrounding benches, for this was examination-day, and
relatives and friends were present to support the last supreme effort.
On the raised platform of the Van, Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, together with
Helwise and a county lady or two, backgrounded by a couple of husbands,
an odd parson and Grumphy, surveyed the final throes of competition.
The examiner, moving about among the workers, was very busy being
taught his business by Harriet, mightily full of contempt for all Dairy
Schools and officials thereto attached. In the last little gleam of sun
outside Wiggie was walking slowly with his brother, while a gentle,
foreign-looking woman struggled with a trio of joyous ruffians rolling
down the hill. Stubbs had a fourth in the Rakestraw bath-chair, and was
wheeling it patiently if awkwardly over the steep slope. The fourth was
a sad little boy of eight, with black eyes swallowing up a pathetic
face, conducting the bath-chair progression with the solemnity of high
ceremonial. He smiled once, though, when a rapturous thrush, enamoured
of the growing sunset, flung it a little flutter of song from a near
hedge; and Lanty suddenly saw Wiggie in the smile.
From the middle of the tent, where the scales awaited the butter,
the caretaker ruled teacher and taught alike, by virtue of ancient
standing, peculiar wit, and a deficiency in hearing which made mutual
wordy warfare impossible. To this autocrat Lanty handed his onlooker’s
threepence, stopping to exchange a word with the examiner before
joining Hamer on the platform. Harriet, however, was still saying her
say.
“Of course I know you think you’re doing no end of good, but it’s all
rot! None of that butter will be _really_ fit to eat--you know it
as well as I do. You wash and work all the goodness out of it, for
one thing. Yet, in a minute, you and all the rest of the crowd will
get up and say what first-class stuff it is, just because it looks
pretty squatting on that table with a silly pattern sprawling over
it. You’ve admitted yourself that I sent you in the best cream of all
the farmers round. Very well! I can send you in a sample of the best
butter to match. But I didn’t learn how to make it in a rotten tent
from a mass of theories walking about with a notebook. I learned it
from hard experience and Stubbs’s swears when he had to eat the result.
Butter-making on the stage, _I_ call it!” Harriet finished, glaring
round at the trim, white figures. “Might be a Gaiety chorus getting
ready to sing ‘We are the Churniest Churners!’ or, ‘Never forget your
Plug!’ Let ’em go home and learn the real thing from their mothers!”
Wiggie looked in over the heads of the pleased crowd.
“Harriet, I’d be awfully obliged if you could persuade Geronimo to come
out of the duck-pond! And I rather believe that Stubbs has emptied the
Little Great Quetta out of the bath-chair.”
Harriet flew, nearly annihilating the examiner. Wiggie met Lanty’s eyes
with the smile that he had already seen on another pair of lips.
“Oh, nothing dangerous! Come out and talk, will you, when business is
over? Isn’t this jolly? I don’t care _what_ Harriet says. I should like
to eat _all_ that butter myself!”
He moved away, followed by looks of passionate gratitude from the
disheartened competitors, and Lanty mounted the platform.
“Seen Dandy Anne?” Hamer asked him in a loud whisper, when he had
shaken hands all round, and found a chair. Grumphy crawled from under
the table, and snored against his knee. Hamer laughed with suppressed
jollity.
“She’s making butter!” he announced in a joyful undertone. “Insisted
on having a shot at seeing what she could make out. Taken all the ten
lessons, as serious as seven Sundays all in a lump! Our Dandy Anne!
Funny, isn’t it?--though you needn’t say I said so. I hope she’ll pull
through all right. Mother here’ll be sadly vexed if she comes out with
a duck-egg!”
He pointed surreptitiously, and, looking along the lines of farmers’
daughters, running his eye from faces he knew personally to others
whose parentage was easily placed, Lanty found Dandy at last no more
than two churns away.
She looked extraordinarily serious, as Hamer had said, and not
only serious but anxious; not only anxious but even--just a
little--dishevelled. Her butter had been a long time in coming, and
though she had it on the worker by now, it would be a race to finish
it. She had seen Lanty when his head first topped the hill, and after
that she had done everything wrong, forgotten her plug, made a thorough
hash of lifting out the butter and had then over-salted it, so that the
marks against her were totting up like a washing-bill, to the distress
of the examiner, who admired her exceedingly. That poor four pounds was
worked and overworked until it didn’t know itself, and was received
for weighing with grunted contempt. With flushed cheeks and escaping
hair, Dandy took it back to finish, and tried to console herself with
a perfectly-executed pattern. Lanty watched her with interest, and
decided that he liked her--just a little--dishevelled.
And then at last came a stir of relief from the patient audience,
and the white figures retreated to a form, looking excited and hot.
The examiner prefaced his report with a short lecture upon butter
in general, keeping a nervous eye on Harriet the while. She was on
the point of argument more than once, but Wiggie, close at hand,
always seemed to know when the explosion was due, and conjured up a
Quetta-ling to distract her.
The examiner was very pleased to be there that day, and very pleased
with results, and everything that had gone wrong had, of course, been
pure accident or a passing spasm of forgetfulness or sheer evil fate.
Because everybody had meant excellently, and that, of course, was the
main thing, as where there was a will there was a way, and the person
who made a mistake to-day would most certainly correct it to-morrow,
etc., etc. Still, mistakes that day were in such negligible quantity
that they were really not worth mentioning. Indeed, he was happy to
say that he had been able to place the whole of the competitors in
the first-class, with one exception only. Here he looked with such
agonised care at least six feet over Dandy’s head that everybody else
instantly looked six feet lower. This, of course, did not imply that
the aforesaid competitor was hopelessly behind the rest; it only meant
that her work was not quite up to the standard. Indeed, any one who had
watched this particular competitor could see with half an eye that she
knew perfectly well how to make butter, only she had been unfortunate.
Everybody knew that butter could turn nasty if it liked, and it had
treated her badly. She had had other misfortunes, too--little troubles
connected with the plug, etc.--but it was really hardly worth while to
dwell upon them. He was most decidedly pleased to be there! And this
time he looked six feet down and straight at Dandy, so adoringly that
all the audience who had really nice feelings instantly looked six feet
up.
Then one of the pretty county ladies rose and said how pleased _she_
was to be there, and how pleased everybody else was pleased, and how
more than pleased everybody would be when they read about it in the
papers, while the competitors wished she would hurry up and put them
out of their misery, and thought how infinitely more desirable it
was to stand on a platform and look charming and sweet and say all
the right things in exactly the right way, with an adoring husband
somewhere behind, than to make the best butter in the Three Kingdoms.
After that, the certificates were given out, and the noble first-class
came up blushing and bowing to receive the spoils of war. Finally,
Dandy, for her duck-egg.
It seemed to her that the tent was ten miles long and packed like a
Military Tournament. She saw the examiner’s eyes bulging with pity, and
wondered absently why they didn’t fall out. She heard her father’s big
whisper: “Now then, Mother, don’t you fret! Don’t fret, Mother!” and
knew that he was patting his wife’s hand. She heard the caretaker’s
grunt. And at the foot of the steps she felt exactly as if hot needles
were dancing red-slippered all over her, simply because there was one
very ordinary person sitting on the platform, engaged in staring at his
boots.
But as she curtsied to the pretty lady and the duck-egg, wishing
herself at Halsted for the last time in her life, Harriet came suddenly
to her rescue.
“Good lad, Dandy!” she bawled, clapping like a small thunderstorm,
and the general embarrassment broke in a burst of amusement and
applause. Everybody laughed; competitors, audience, the miserable
examiner--thrilling with gratitude towards his late tormentor--and
Dandy herself. Grumphy waddled forward to the extreme edge, and reached
out a long, loving tongue.
“I am sure we all appreciate Miss Shaw’s sporting effort!” the pretty
lady said prettily, and there was more applause. Dandy looked up
bravely and met Lanty’s eyes, turned on her at last as if they really
saw her.
“It was very bad butter!” she said candidly, putting out a hand to the
rolling tongue, and raising a fresh laugh by her cheerful honesty.
Lancaster leaned forward, smiling.
“May I buy it for that thin dog of mine?” he asked; and instantly the
Lane was about them both instead of the crowded tent, and a vision of
rippling wind on the turning corn. They had been alien, then; he had
almost frankly disliked her; but that was long ago, and in this moment
they were all the nearer for it. She had said that she was looking for
herself, even as Grumphy, galumphing through new wheat; and in looking
for herself she had found somebody--ah, how much dearer! And _he_ had
said that the whip was the only teacher. Well, she had come through
many a scourging of longing and revolt, unbearable pain, self-hatred
and contempt, and had learned many things; but in this hour of absurd
humiliation she knew that the one great thing she had learned she had
at last taught him also. She turned and went blindly through the still
cheering crowd to her seat. But it was twenty miles back, because she
went from him.
As they streamed out of the tent, Bluecaster came over a hedge on
a splashed hunter, and the Quetta-lings, who had a passion for all
locomotion that did not include plain walking upon their own legs,
swarmed up him. Harriet stalked after them, and lifted the Little Great
Quetta down again, because he was precious. The big, black eyes filled
with tears, but he did not rebel. He knew that he was precious, and it
had very serious drawbacks.
Lanty ran into Denny, standing in tongue-tied admiration before a Miss
Braithwaite. So had he stood all afternoon, from the first whirl of
the swinging churn to the proud moment when she had laid before the
examiner the four best pounds of the day. He started when Lanty tapped
him on the shoulder.
“Your wife will have plenty of sale for her butter, Thomas!” he told
him slyly.
Denny reddened hotly, and found his tongue with a rush.
“Ay! an’ yours’ll likely be her first customer!” he retorted briskly,
with meaning, and chuckled as he saw his embarrassment reflected. He
had caught the episode of the duck-egg. Lanty went away hurriedly.
Wiggie joined him on the slope, with Edgar and his Southern wife, and
they went down together to Watters, to find Dandy and the examiner
putting the last touches to the waiting meal, while Helwise rooked the
instructress for a bazaar. Harriet and Stubbs followed with the rolling
ruffians, and then Bluecaster. Bluecaster had taken the Little Great
Quetta to see the horse stabled, because you may sometimes look on at
interesting things, even if you _are_ precious. And lastly, Mr. and
Mrs. Shaw with their other butter-supporting guests, who were still
as pleased about everything as ever. They did not stay long, though,
having some distance to drive; and then the Quetta-lings were able to
let themselves go with Italian shrieks and wild, operatic gestures.
Only the Little Great Quetta sat silent and could not eat for quivering
excitement, because a real, live, large horse had munched out of his
thin, little hand; until Bluecaster, with a furtive air of removing his
neighbour’s landmark, took him on his knee and fed him himself.
Lanty looked round the big, joyous, crowded room, and in spite of the
buzz of talk and the soaring, staccato shrieks, felt again the peace
that had met him, months ago, on his first entrance. He was happy, too.
It came to him with a shock, since he had been so sure that he could
never be happy again. Hamer made him happy, moving about gloriously
contented with the swarm under his roof; and Mrs. Shaw, presiding with
conjuring cleverness over her teapot. Dandy had given hers to Helwise,
who loved the effect of her white fingers on the silver handle, and
took care to do nothing more active than incline the spout gently
towards each cup. Dandy did not make him feel happy, though. She made
him feel breathless, and as if he would like to climb on the table and
shriek with the Quetta-lings. It was safer not to look at her.
Wiggie, however, murmuring at his side, busily bridging a big gap with
his summer experiences, filled him, as usual, with little chuckles of
content. Lanty noticed that he never forgot to turn his face so that
his brother might read his words. Presently he went a step further back
still.
“Did I ever tell you that all the players in that hockey-match turned
up again, one after another, to say how sorry they were I was ill?
I thought it so awfully decent of them! It helped a lot, I can tell
you. Saunders _did_ say that, if only I had stayed in my place, he
could have done all the work and perhaps saved me something, but
that’s--well--just Saunders, isn’t it?--and he brought me a book on the
actinic force of light, to cheer me up a bit when I was getting better.
Do _you_ know anything about the actinic force of light? Neither did
I till I met Saunders, but I do now. I learned it up to talk to him.
The little curate said that he had saved my life, and that I owed him
a penny bun. Harriet was very angry--you’ve no idea! She said there
was plenty of food in the kitchen, and that he had done nothing but
sit still while a motor-car took him somewhere, and that anybody, even
an idiot or a parson, could have done _that_. The curate said the
point was that he was the body on the spot. It was his motto. In the
family, he said, like dear old Stubbs. I like him. He lent me a novel
by--perhaps I had better not say it out loud. The others were all
awfully kind, too. I liked them. I remarked to Harriet one day that
they seemed to be really keen on music up here, and she just snorted.
She said: ‘You don’t imagine, do you, that they care a straw about
your being a singer, any more than I do? They’re simply stuck on you
because you stole that goal!’ Edgar wasn’t a bit pleased--were you, old
man?--and Gardner said awful things, but I think I liked it.”
“He is the Great Quetta!” Edgar put in, with a note of indignation in
his deep, curious voice.
Wiggie laughed.
“Do you know that they say I may--perhaps--be able to sing again, in a
year’s time? I’ve still a half-crown or two in the toe of a stocking,
and Edgar’s got a post somewhere where they waggle their fingers
instead of their tongues, so the babies won’t starve yet awhile. We’ll
keep the pot boiling, somehow, but I do not think I shall ever be the
Great Quetta again.”
Edgar uttered an exclamation of angry pain, and his brother smiled
at him affectionately. Blenkinship’s Marget came up and handed him a
medicine-glass, and he finished the tail of the smile on her.
“What does it matter? Anyhow, I can always teach; and the Little Great
Quetta will keep us all out of the Workhouse when we’re old! You must
hear him sing, Lancaster. He has the true singer’s throat, and cords
like the harp of all the winds. Perfect ear, of course. Even the
Quetta-lings, shrieking themselves hoarse over there, have _that_. He
will be the Greatest Quetta some day, please God, and make up to Edgar
for his poor old ears, and to me for all the poor other things that
have gone wrong in my inside--won’t he, old man?”
“He looks very sensitive,” Lanty observed, watching the child.
“The instrument has to be tuned,” Wiggie answered, rather sadly. “It is
out of wrung strings that both God and man make their sweetest music.”
“Still jabbering about your stupid singing!” Harriet scoffed, thrusting
a plate of scones into his face. “Try these. They’re buttered with Wild
Duck. I told the examiner it was the stuff from the Van, and he cleared
out like a shot, and hasn’t been seen since. By the way, the L.G. knows
what you call your Quetta-Song perfectly now. He was singing it all
morning.”
“It’s a song I used to sing,” Wiggie explained, for Lanty’s benefit,
“a song about lambkins and resting-places and things. We call it the
Quetta-Song because the Quettas never have a resting-place. They are
always on the move.”
“I know a song like that,” Lanty said slowly, out of far depths when
Harriet had turned away, and nobody but Wiggie could hear. “_I_ call it
my Home-Song. I heard it years ago at the Westmorland Festival.”
“You heard _me_,” Wiggie said simply. “I remember singing it there. It
is known as the Quetta-Song in the profession, so the others do not
sing it. It was when I first came out and was plump and pretty, with my
voice not quite full grown, so of course you wouldn’t remember me. But
I thank you ever so much for remembering the song.”
“I always remembered it, but I lost faith in it,” Lanty said. “I could
find no home to match the song.”
“But you will find it soon!” Wiggie answered with a quick look, and saw
where the other’s eyes turned. “I have found mine,” he added. He stood
up as Harriet came back. “Harriet--when may I come home again?”
“Home?” Harriet stared.
“Home to Wild Duck--for good!”
They gazed at each other over the plate of scones, and then, still
clasping it, the Rur’l D’trict C’cillor fled from the room. The Great
Quetta (who was only Wiggie) followed.
“Seen Brack lately?” Hamer inquired in a low tone, dropping into the
vacant chair. Lanty nodded.
“Yes, I’ve come across him a good deal. He often looks in to see me,
too. But he’s leaving--did you know?--giving up Thweng in the spring,
and going out to Canada again, to join Lup. They say he wants to take
Braithwaite’s youngest girl with him. He’s money, you know, so he can
afford to play about between the Continents. I’ll be sorry to lose
him--yes, it’s come to that, though I’d never have believed it! There’s
nothing he won’t do for me, nowadays. Oh, he’s the old Brack again, of
course!--all the stage-effects piled on as thick as ever--but the old
Brack with a difference. He still goes to church, by the way.”
“New life for everybody,” Hamer mused. “There’s not much doubt where
Cyril will end, is there? You’ll be putting out your hand, too, my boy!”
Lanty looked at him with a question in his eyes.
“Put it out soon!” said Hamer.
Bluecaster left, shortly afterwards, and the agent walked part of the
way with him.
“You’ll come back?” Hamer begged, concerned. “You’ll stop to dinner,
you and your aunt? I’ve scarcely had the tail of a word with you, with
all those folks to see to. Come back!”
And all the rest of the party gathered on the steps and called after
him as he went down the drive--kindly Shaws and gentle Quettas,
Helwise, smilingly satisfied and perfectly at home, and Stubbs,
untroubled by the least alluring vision of any White Lion, all under
the long, creepered house in the opal evening. “Come back! Be sure you
come back!”
The two men turned into the Lane, walking by the tired horse, and after
their short business chat was finished they went on some way together
in silence. Bluecaster was going abroad again soon to his usual winter
round, but to-night he went back alone to his big, lonely house. Lanty
was glad that, behind himself, the friendly, happy party awaited him at
Watters.
Bluecaster’s would always be a lonely life, he thought, unconsciously
prophetic. Such a temperament as his would send him weaponless into
every battle, and receive him back more sure than ever of the forces
arrayed against him, yet pathetically ready to the bitter end. And each
defeat would leave him more silent and more shy. Yes--and more lovable,
he said to himself, holding his stirrup for him while he mounted, and
watching for the last courteous salute that he knew would be sent him
from the turn. Bluecaster might be little more than a symbol of great
ideals beyond his perfect grasp, but even as such he met a passionate
need in the stronger man behind him, since every brave Viking-soul
sails forth the happier for the figurehead and the spilt wine.
There was coming into the sky the steely clearness of still autumn, and
a faint breath of frost was promised by the yellow bar yet lingering
on the horizon and the starkening edge of the woods. It was darker and
stiller in the Lane, and when Dandy grew out of the mist creeping
up from the earth beneath, she came with the hush and mystery of
vapour-borne elves. Not only was she not outside any more, but she
had looked right into the fairies’ haunts and bent her ear to their
rippling talk. Across the almost fiercely-pure sky the birds went home.
Close at hand, she had still her mystery, but now it was human and
breathing, with kind, shy eyes and delicate colour coming to and fro.
“Wiggie sent me!” she said rather breathlessly. “He told me to stop
you at the last gap as you came back. He said you had lost something,
and would find it there, if you looked. Do you know what he meant? He
wouldn’t explain--just packed me off with the message. I don’t know
what to make of him--he’s like a schoolboy to-night! It’s glorious
to see him getting well, isn’t it? You wouldn’t believe how pleased
Watters was to have him back! Two roses bloomed in the night under his
window, and at dawn there were half-a-dozen birds waiting on the sill.”
“I believe he’s a wizard!” Lanty smiled. “Look at Harriet! He has her
at the end of a string.”
“Harriet has fallen in love with him! I believe it happened the
night he came to Crabtree--the dreadful night after the storm when I
brought you the soup--I mean, when Our Agnes--Wiggie--Harriet----” She
floundered, agonised and helpless.
He stopped, looking at her with a frown.
“When _you_ brought me the soup?”
“Yes. No!” She was almost in tears at the unmeant revelation. “It
was Harriet! _She_ made it, and there were cockroaches--a tin of
something--I washed the pan.”
He held doggedly to his question.
“When _you_ brought me the soup?”
“I carried it in--that was all--and you didn’t know. You thought it was
the servant! But I only found the tray-cloth. It was Harriet----”
“Bother Harriet!” he said cruelly, and put his hands on her shoulders,
trying to see her face. “It was _you_ who fed me, _you_ who lighted
the fire and tidied up those horrible papers, and were good to me all
round? And I didn’t know!”
“No, you didn’t know!” She let her pride slip through soft fingers and
looked up at him, all the pain of that gone hour in her sobbing voice.
“But you ought to have known--oh, you ought, you _ought_! I wanted to
be good to you more than anything in the world, and you wouldn’t let
me. I asked you--I begged in my heart--how was it you did not hear? I
did not dare to speak aloud. You had said I did not understand--do you
remember?--and I was afraid. So when I found you did not hear, I went
away, and you let me go. You let me go!”
“I was out on a far road, sweetheart, and I had lost you in the dark. I
doubt I haven’t got back to you, even yet!”
“Come soon!” she whispered, in his arms.
Behind them, a crystal voice broke into singing, and, turning, they
looked together through the last Green Gate of Vision. On the hill-side
a little child was standing with his face turned to the bar of sunset,
as if he sang to listening souls behind that dying door of gold. Far
out of sight, the Quettas stood arm in arm, risking their Little Great
Quetta in the autumn mist. There was nothing framed by the Gate of
Vision but the sleeping land and the singing child.
He sang the Wander-Song of the Quettas, that was Lancaster’s Song of
Home.
“What can lambkins do,
All the keen night through?
Nestle by their woolly mother,
The careful ewe.
What can nestlings do
In the nightly dew?
Sleep beneath their mother’s wing
Till dawn breaks anew.
If in field or tree
There might only be
Such a warm, soft sleeping-place
Found for me!”
With the last note he stayed, looking up at the door of Heaven closing
before him. Almost he might have seen the long years of wandering and
struggle, searing glory and usuried fame, before he came to his last,
soft sleeping-place on the Arm of God.
“And _my_ place?” Lanty whispered. “It is cold in the dark.”
“It is warm in my heart,” she said.